I've fallen a little behind on the sketch dailies that I've been participating in via twitter and occasionally Instagram. It's a really great community of people using social media to the advantage of spreading their visual talents with daily prompts.

Here's one from a few weeks ago, the prompt was Robin Hood. I want to flesh it out into completed illustration, I've just been working on developing the values.

For the last few years I've wanted to create a deck of cards based on the incredible and expansive world of the Last Airbender. Unfortunately, before Korra there weren't enough Airbenders to do so.

But now, thanks to the brilliant addition to that beautiful world, Legend of Korra, (shoutouts to Harmonic Convergence and Pema & Tenzin), there are enough Airbenders to fill a suit (insert excited, flailing gif here). After I made myself a giant pot of coffee--several giant pots of coffee, I set to work.

Replacing the original suits with the 4 elements (earth, water, air, fire), I spent over 300 hours creating 54 different cards featuring 54 different characters in their respective element including both benders and non-benders. Think of a character and they're probably in this deck! I say probably because let's be real, there are dozens of wonderful characters in both series, some who we only met briefly. (If you want to know if a character you love is in the deck, please feel free to message me). It was a labor of love, to say the very least. And with such a wide array of varied and wonderful characters to choose from, sometimes I had to make a tough decision. I often asked for help with those decisions from my friends who are also fans.

Details that I would tell you in person if I could:

The backgrounds to each element are a silhouetted version of the original benders: the koi fish (Water), the badger mole (Earth), the dragon (Fire) and the sky bison (Air).

When you flip the cards over, the backside is designed to resemble the shell of a giant lion turtle with the symbols of the 4 elements in the corners and the White Lotus in the middle.

Some characters feature 2 different portraits. In terms of development, I don't think any one character remained the same if you compared them at the end to who they were ar the start. But if they underwent a huge character AND physical change, their cards reflect that duality. Zuko, Princess Yue, and Korra are a few.

During the intro to either series, the first words that are spoken are the elements (which gives me the chills every time). They're not listed in the same order in both series, so the box reflects the intros: one side has the elements in order the way they were introduced in Avatar, the other side is Korra.